My arrival at the island caused no little commotion among the young bloods, each of whose chances of gaining the girl of his heart, and being united to her by the local Samoan missionary teacher, depended in a great measure upon his ability to provide sustenance for her from the sea; for Nanomaga, like the rest of the Ellice Group, is but little more than a richly-verdured sandbank, based upon a foundation of coral, and yielding nothing to its people but coconuts and a coarse species of taro, called puraka. The inhabitants, in their low-lying atolls, possess no running streams, no fertile soil, in which, as in the mountainous isles of Polynesia, the breadfruit, the yam, and the sweet potato grow and flourish side by side with such rich and luscious fruits as the orange and banana, and pineapple—they have but the beneficent coconut and the evergiving sea to supply their needs. And the sea is kind to them, as Nature meant it to be to her own children.
The native missionary at Nanomaga was a Samoan. He was intended by nature to be a warrior, a leader of men; or—and no higher praise can I give to his dauntless courage—a boat-header on a sperm whaler. Strong of arm and quick of eye, he was the very man to either throw the harpoon or deal the death-giving thrust or the lance to the monarch of the ocean world; but fate or circumstance had made him a missionary instead. He was a fairly good missionary, but a better fisherman.
Three miles from Nanomaga is a submerged reef, marked on the chart as the Grand Coral Reef, but known to the natives as Tia Kau, "the reef." It is in reality a vast mountain of coral, whose bases lie two hundred fathoms deep, with a flattened summit of about fifty acres in extent, rising to within five fathoms of the surface of the sea. This spot is the resort of incredible numbers of fish, both deep-sea haunting and surface swimming. Some of the latter, such as the pala (not the palu )—a long, scaleless, beautifully-formed fish, with a head of bony plates and teeth like a rip-saw—are of great size, and afford splendid sport, as they are game fighters and almost as powerful as a porpoise. They run to over 100 lbs., and yet are by no means a coarse fish. In the shallow water on the top of this mountain reef there are some eight or nine varieties of rock cod, none of which were of any great size; but far below, at a depth of from fifty to seventy fathoms, there were some truly monstrous fish of this species, and I and my missionary friend had the luck to catch the four largest ever taken—221 lbs., 208 lbs., 118 lbs., and 111 lbs. I had caught when fishing for
schnapper, in thirty fathoms off Camden Haven, on the coast of New South Wales, a mottled black and grey rock cod, which weighed 83 lbs., and was assured by the Sydney Museum authorities that such a weight for a rock cod was rare in that part of the Pacific, but that bêche-de-mer fishermen on the Great Barrier Reef had occasionally captured fish of the same variety of double that size and weight.
Not possessing a boat, we fished from a canoe—a light, but strong and beautifully constructed craft, with "whalebacks" fore and aft to keep it from being swamped by seas when facing or running from a surf. The outrigger was formed of a very light wood, called pua , about fourteen inches in circumference. With the teacher and myself there usually went with us a third man, whose duty it was to keep the canoe head to wind, for anchoring in deep water in such a tiny craft was out of the question, as well as dangerous, should a heavy fish or a shark get foul of the outrigger. Capsizes in the daytime we did not mind, but at night numbers of grey sharks were always cruising around, and they were then especially savage and daring.
Leaving the pretty little village, which was embowered in a palm grove on the lee side of the island, we would, if intending to fish on the Tia Kau, make a start before dawn, remain there till the canoe was loaded to her raised gunwale pieces with the weight of fish, and then return. Night fishing on the Tia Kau by a single canoe was forbidden by the kaupule (head men) as being too dangerous on account of the sharks, and so usually from ten to twenty canoes set out
together. If one did come to grief through being swamped, or capsized by having the outrigger fouled by a shark, there was always assistance near at hand, and it rarely happened that any of the crew were bitten. In 1872, however, a fearful tragedy occurred on the Tia Kau, when a party of seventy natives—men, women, and children—who were crossing to the neighbouring Island of Nanomea, were attacked by sharks when overtaken on the reef by a squall at night. Only two escaped to tell the tale. [ [14] ]
If, however, we meant to try for takuo , a huge variety of the mackerel-tribe, or lahe'u , a magnificent bream-shaped fish, we had no need to go so far as the dangerous Tia Kau; three or four cable-lengths from the beach, and right in front of the village, we could lie in water as smooth as glass, and seventy fathoms in depth. Our bait was invariably flying-fish, freshly caught, or the tentacles of an octopus. My lines were of white American cotton, and I generally used two hooks, one below and one above the sinker, both baited with a whole flying-fish, while my companions preferred wooden or iron hooks, of their own manufacture, and lines made from hibiscus bark or coconut fibre.
I shall always remember with pleasure my first lahe'u . I was accompanied by the native teacher alone, and we paddled off from the village just after evening service, and brought to about a quarter of a mile outside the reef. The rest of the islanders had gone
round in their canoes to the weather side of the little island to fish for takuo , for we were expecting a malaga , or party of visitors from the Island of Nukufetau in a day or two, and unusual supplies of fish had to be obtained, to sustain, not only the island's record as the fishing centre of the universe, but the people's reputation for hospitality. It had been my suggestion to the teacher that he and I, who were unable to accompany the others, should try what we could do nearer home. The night was brilliantly starlight, and the sea as smooth as glass—so smooth that there was not even the faintest swell upon the reef. The trade wind was at rest, and not the faintest breath of air moved the foliage of the coco palms lining the white strip of beach. Now and then a splash or a sudden commotion in the water around us would denote that some hapless flying-fish had taken an aerial flight from a pursuing pala , or that a shark had seized a turtle in his cruel jaws. Lighting our pipes, we lowered our lines together according to island etiquette, and touched bottom at thirty fathoms; then hauled in a fathom or two of line to avoid fouling the coral. In a few minutes my companion hooked an utu , a sluggish fish, somewhat like a salmon in appearance, with shining silvery scales and a broad flat head. As he was hauling in, and I was looking over the side of the canoe to watch it coming up, I felt a sharp, heavy tug at my own line, and, before I could check it, thirty or forty yards of line whizzed through my fingers with lightning speed.